Sorry, don't agree with that. Every time I looked at SB-E/X79 it just looked like dated tech. Much happier with Haswell, especially the modern Z87 chipset with full native SATA6G and 6 USB 3.0 ports.

Intel just loves dragging their feet with these E platforms and I think you'll find fewer and fewer enthusiasts are going to be willing to wait for their releases unless they absolutely need the extra cores. 1.5 years and 1.5 gens behind the mainstream performance desktop platform is unacceptable, imo.Reply

I agree. It's not like this is obscure tech no one will use. This is absolutely necessary technical advances that should have been easy for Intel to add into X79. Hell, I remember when X79 came out, everyone was complaining about how plain and boring it was. If I remember correctly, Intel had initially intended to offer more with it, but had to scale back because of some chipset snafu that forced them to remove features at the last moment.

They were supposed to be added back in with the next chipset update, but no one--especially not then--expected to be waiting two years for a new update to the SB-E line or to get NO chipset update even when IB-E came...Reply

My thoughts exactly. What is the point of a so-called "high-end" platform that is consistently an entire generation behind the mainstream parts? Why don't Intel's releases follow a pattern more like Nvidia and AMD for video cards, where the high-end parts come first, followed by more mainstream parts down the road? Reply

Totally agree. With an 8-core Haswell-E in the pipeline, I see not reason to go to an Ivy Bridge E or any other processor. My good ole OCed I7-920 will just have to "limp" along for a while longer, LOL.

Considering that the new Mac Pro has been announced and will feature 12 cores in a single socket, these 6 core Ivy Bridge-E chips likely use a different die. It'd be wasteful to disable half the cores on a die to get a 6 core chip unless yields are abysmal. This 6 cores chips are likely native 6 core dies with the quad core being the harvested one.

Perviously SandyBridge-E came in native 4 and 8 core dies with all 6 core chips being harvested from 8 core dies.Reply

Couldn't the 12 core chips by Intel be a return to the integrating two separate dies into one chip a la Q6600-esque melding? That would let Intel keep their 8 core chips, die harvest to 6 and meld two of those into one chip. Sure, it's not pretty or particularly efficient, but it's cheaper than having a special 12 core die and a special 8 core die for different markets.

It also promises to expand to 16 core dies in the future if they need to. Power sipping isn't as important to customers who need lots of Intel IPC-powerful cores. I didn't say it wasn't important, just not AS important.Reply

The dual die strategy wouldn't work as well now as you'd be cutting the number of memory channels in half. The Core 2 Quads were able to get away with a MCM as the memory controller was still a shared, separate chip as if it were two sockets. Reply

Socket 2011 supports quad channel memory. Putting two dies with quad channel memory support into that socket would mean that only 4 of the 8 channels possible would be usable. Similarly the number of PCI-e lanes would remain stack at 40 instead of the 84* possible.

*DMI on the second die could be used as an additional 4 PCI-E lanes since wouldn't be connected to the chipset.Reply

It's because Intel only has a few TDP classes. I think at this point in time, anything that might use more than 90W will be thrown into the 130W class. It does make sense though, its not like anybody will develop a case/cooling system which can handle only one of the three existing Ivy Bridge-E CPUs.If you are looking for a realistic power draw of the CPU, the TDP is not all that relevant for you anyways.Reply

If you believe rumors, Haswell-E is coming next year around the same time. SB-E, though, had an impressively long run (for those who invested), so I have my doubts that Intel will actually release it on time. If they DO manage to release Haswell-E next year on schedule, I think IB-E is an amazingly bad deal, due mostly to the chipset you're going to have use with it.

Will Intel use fluxless solder or more of the air-gap el cheapo special they've been afflicting their post-SB CPU's with? The world wonders.

If Intel truly wishes the enthusiast to stop using their mainstream chips (a la going from LGA to BGA), then Intel ought give thought to offering an E-series chip that AT LEAST matches the 2500k/3570k/4670k pricing since that's proven the sweet spot for ...how many years now? That would serve as balm to the horror story that will be "MOAR HASWELL!" next year if we can all just switch to the Enthusiast line.

But right now, they want more for the CPU, more for the board, more for the memory... all so we can invest in old tech. If Haswell E rumors are to be believed, we'd also be paying more for antiquated tech not to last the year. Somehow, I think we'd probably get a year, but that's about all.

Eh. I don't see why Intel can't just give Enthusiasts the same tech as the mainstream in the same year, even if not the same quarter. Seems like the least they could do. Oh, and reassure enthusiasts by guaranteeing them fluxless solder (addressing the complaint head on) if they spend up on an "Enthusiast" chip.Reply

Personally, I don't really care about the warranty. I'm much more interested in the impact of better temperatures on overall performance. I de-lidded my 3770K two weeks ago, replacing the stock TIM with Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra, and I was stunned at how much the temperatures dropped. All four cores now run ~20C cooler than before on the 4.8 GHz offset overclock that I use 24/7, and I can now reach 5.0+ GHz without thermal throttling. I'm very happy with the results, and I would de-lid IVB again in a heartbeat. Once de-lidded, IVB performs exceptionally well in high overclocks. Reply

I'm a software developer. In college I took a COBOL course. When I graduated everyone was saying that in 5, maybe 10, years COBOL would be obsolete. Here we are 25 years later and there are still a lot of fortune 500 companies who are running their businesses on effective, surprisingly flexible COBOL platforms.

I've watched young leaders choose the latest and greatest software solutions instead of using the pre-existing COBOL platform. They believed the tool that made their life easier was in the companies best interest. They usually spent themselves into oblivion trying to integrate and manage their systems in the context of the existing platform.

In looking back on Intel's past history, I trust that they have solid business reasons for choosing the release chipset that they did.Reply

The big question is always what comes next and when. Until the day of it's actual release, (not just announced, but shipping) there's no way to know. It may be fun to discuss it because it's the stuff that makes this stuff interesting but no one has a crystal ball on these things.

What I'd like to know is to whom will Haswell-E appeal, given that other than graphics, Haswell is not much faster than Ivy Bridge? As for Ivy Bridge-E vs. Sandy Bridge-E, I imagine it will be primarily appealing for workstation/server applications, unless they update the chipset.Reply

The "E" processors don't have integrated graphics. These are basically the Xeon E5-16xx-s. So the appeal is that none of the silicon is going to the GPU, just the CPU, allowing for more cores and better cores. Plus, Haswell E will probably see 8 or 10 cores. Ivy Bridge E5-2600s are going to get up to 12 now.Reply

It is a sad state of affairs that there is simply no application demand on the High-End Desktop (HEDT) so Intel can safely sell castrated and rejected 10-core Xeon E5 2600 v2 dies as 6-core Ivy Bridge E SKUs...

However, with Ivy Bridge EP, Xeon line will be getting up to 12 cores (15 with slightly different socket but still 2011 pins), while "high end desktop" still gets only 6 cores.

I am sure if things were different in the application world and if we had today "killer apps" for desktop that are highly threaded, that we would be running 15 cores on LGA 2011 today (which is now exclusive for Ivy Bridge EX)

Instead, we still have tons of single-threaded applications where it matters more to have less cores but with higher frequency. I suppose this is also why Intel is pursuing this strategy for the high-end desktop SKUs. If they went for more cores but with lower max frequency, some desktop benchmarks would not look as good.Reply

I'm trying to find a good excuse to upgrade my 4.5GHz overclocked 2700K and I still haven't found any. This is really sad. We need some real competition from AMD here. The only compelling features of the Haswell desktop platform is the larger number of SATAIII ports and native USB3 support, but not the speed. And both E lines have outdated chipset:(Reply